The invention concerns a thread having properties of resistance to cutting, equipment for protecting against cutting, in particular a glove, produced from such a thread, and a method of producing such an item of equipment.
Glass filaments are known for having properties of resistance to cutting. This resistance can be defined with respect to the French and European standard NF EN 388, which concerns gloves for protection against mechanical risks. It was proposed, in the document FR-2 818 503, to manufacture a glove for protecting against cutting using a knitting of glass filaments each sheathed with one or more threads. Use is therefore made of a sheathed single-filament core thread which is knitted in order to form the glove. However, a single-filament core thread has too great a stiffness to allow comfortable use of the glove produced from such a thread.
It is known, from the documents U.S. Pat. No. 5,568,657, EP-1 180 555, US-2002/011062 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,845,476, threads having properties of resistance to cutting comprising a multifilament core thread comprising a plurality of continuous glass filaments. However, the number of glass filaments is not adjusted so that, at a given numbering, the thread provides a great flexibility and a great resistance to repeated flexions.
The invention aims to mitigate this drawback by proposing a thread having properties of resistance to cutting comprising one or more sheathed multifilament core thread, the core thread being a multifilament thread wherein the number of filaments is adjusted to provide a greater flexibility and a greater resistance. The glove produced from such a thread has characteristics of resistance to cutting in accordance with NF EN 388, in particular with regard to resistance to cutting by slicing, and flexibility adapted to its use, as well as a great durability. To this end, the invention concerns a thread having properties of resistance to cutting comprising at least one core thread sheathed with at least one sheathing thread consisting of continuous fibres or filaments, the core thread being a multifilament thread comprising 50 to 1800 continuous glass filaments whose diameter varies from 5 to 15 micrometers. Therefore, at a given numbering, the core thread is more flexible and more resistant to repeated flexions.
According to a second aspect, the invention concerns equipment for protecting against cutting such as a glove, comprising knitted fabric of at least one thread as described above. Such a glove is therefore comfortable and has an important durability.
According to a third aspect, the invention concerns a method of producing such protective equipment comprising the following steps:                sheathing at least one core thread with at least one sheathing thread so as to produce a thread as described above;        knitting, in the form of protective equipment, at least one such thread, for example on a straight-line knitting machine;        at least partially covering the knitted fabric with one or more layers of covering, for example by soaking.Other objects and advantages of the invention will emerge during the following description given with reference to the accompanying drawing.        